Easter is three days away. How have you prepared? Have you organized the service, coordinated the volunteers, made a landing page for your website, advertised in your local community, encouraged members to invite friends and family, and all of the rest that goes into a special service or event? I hope you have. There’s nothing wrong with all those things, and they should be done if we are to do our very best, however, these are not the most important things, and nor are they sufficient on their own.
As I’ve written about before, all Christians are called to pray, and to fast. Jesus made it very clear that prayer and fasting is not merely a good option, but a required part of a full Christian life and ministry. So what does this mean for us? It means that we need to not neglect the most important things in order to do less important things.
I love the analogy of our lives being like an empty jar and we have large rocks, pebbles, sand, and water that we can fill our time with. So often we allow the water and sand in our lives to fill every open moment and so the large rocks can never seem to fit. However, if we prioritize and are more disciplined to add the large rocks in, then there will always be room to add the pebbles, sand, and water as they are important as well, just not as important.
I hope that you and your team have been taking time to pray and even fast for your upcoming Easter service, or other special events. If not, I encourage you that this is something that cannot be skipped. We cannot do a lot of physical work and expect to have spiritual results. We, as Christian leaders, need to set the example that we rely on God’s grace and strength to do His work, which means our primary focus needs to be going before God in prayer and fasting.
Here are some of my favorite quotes on prayer and ministry that I hope encourage you in this good work.
“As it is the business of tailors to make clothes and of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray.” – Martin Luther
“Prayer – secret, fervent, believing prayer – lies at the root of all personal godliness.” – William Carey
“If you are strangers to prayer you are strangers to power.” – Billy Sunday
“Little prayer, little power. Much prayer, much power.” – Rick Warren
“That four hours of work for which one hour of prayer prepares, is far better than five hours of work without prayer.” – George Mueller
“The church’s organization, methods, marketing, and machinery are powerless to deliver apart from prayer.” – Bruce Zachary